Author: CARR, John Francis
Biography:
CARR, John Francis (1786-1862: ancestry.co.uk)
The eldest child of John Carr, an attorney, and his wife Hannah Maria Marsden, he was born on 4 Dec. 1786 and baptised on 8 Dec. at Horbury, near Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Nothing is known about his education but on 2 Dec. 1803 he was articled to his father as a clerk and he subsequently had a long and successful legal career on the Northern Circuit, rising to become a district magistrate. On 21 Sept. 1823 he married Mary Robinson (1791-1871) at her home parish in Hemingbrough, North Yorkshire. Of their three daughters, one died of scarlet fever in 1841 and another, Mary Ann, contracted what proved to be a disastrously unhappy marriage against the wishes of her parents. The family lived at Carr Lodge in Horbury. Carr died on 25 Dec. 1862, leaving an estate worth under £4000. The attribution to Carr of The Bar, with Sketches of Eminent Judges was first made in MR; the MR review notes that there was much speculation about the identity of the author at the time of the book’s publication. Given details in the poem about judges and lawyers on the Northern Circuit and, particularly, about Wakefield, the attribution to Carr is certainly credible. (ancestry.co.uk 13 Nov. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 13 Nov. 2024; horburyhistory.org 13 Nov. 2024; GM [1863], 257; MR [1825], 77-83)